Brigitte Engler, over the last two decades, has been working on a body of work where figuration and abstraction mingle, come together and apart in the moving perspective of a kaleidoscope. The organic patterns with its curvilinear, undulating lines recall the structure of the vegetal world embraced by Art Nouveau, the curvaceous lines of Klimt’s lovers bodies, the photographs of Karl Bromfeld, but also the baroque fold.

Like the poetry of Francis Ponge addresses the material life to operate a transformation of our own perception of being -to become the glass of water- in an hypnotic gaze, Brigitte Engler addresses the language of forms leading us into the curvilinear patterns to a place where form comes out of matter, an undulating landscape questioning a certain order. Figuration is a possibility as in the surprise of the image in the minerals of Roger Caillois. In the curves, the undulating and radiating patterns, one finds forms that speak of the mystery of life, at once an indefinite and concrete presence, the miracle of matter in the imprint.

Brigitte Engler’s needlepoints are like pixels in a photography. They take us in the center of an image of the material world to the point where the image dissolves itself. We are in the other reality of this world, the poetic reality of the vein, the bark, the structure, the primal vibrations. A little bit like Alice, we fell inside a space, a vibrating and beautiful interior space where circulates an intensity that would be like a low secret tension.

emmanuelle guattari ( translated from the French)

“The pattern was so clear, so forceful,
every line meandering on its own in the general
scheme, knotting space, plotting time, like a live
topographical map, a geological view of her
own mind. It’s all there she thought, feeling
very peaceful.”

Sylvère Lotringer excerpt from “Never any ever after”

“Focusing on the experience of the process as
I work with mechanical means of reproduction
such as rubbings, linocuts, embroideries, I
re-present vernacular patterns, ephemeral
and anonymous collected haphazardly:
graffiti, wood grain patterns, commercial
designs to oppose to the pure abstraction of
thought, the physicality of here and now.”Brigitte Engler